Category Archives: AC Experiences

Sorry if I haven’t made a Thursday blog in two weeks. I was worn out because of school and such, but I will be back to writing big on Town of StarFall. I’ll improve my performance next Monday.

Today’s entry is the last of the four opinionated lists of ACNL (villagers, items, PWPs, and tours and holidays). I will go over more explanation on my three favorite island tours, three worst island tours, three favorite holidays, and three worst holidays.

Island Tours

The Island Tours is a combination of the NES games from the GameCube Version and the Island feature of the same game, but only put into a portable system exclusive AC game. These are fun, but I don’t use them in StarFall. Some of these tours are cool, but others are not.

Best:

Gardening Tours – my favorite of the Island Tours is the Gardening Tours (all three of them). The purpose of this is to pick the flowers Tortimer is specifically looking for and planting them in the planter box. Easy tour, you can pick anything. Medium tour, they have to be either of the same breed or of the same color. Hard tour, they have to be one specific flower (both breed and color). Even on the hard tours, I had an easy time getting the gold medals.

Scavenger Hunt – the second best Island Tours are the second easiest. However, I don’t see a difference in difficulty at all. Since I am good at furniture names, I can get the gold medals on all three difficulties with no sweat.

Ore Hunting – my third favorite of the Island Torus is the mineral finding tour. What you do here is that you break rocks to collect ore to earn points as there are four pieces of ore of the same kind that are worth more. In the harder difficulties, I tend to find the special ore and the secret ore that is worth even more points before getting the other ore.

Worst:

Labyrinth Tours – Of all of the Island Tours, I did not enjoy this one as much at all. It’s not easy to find all of the fruits with a limited time. Not only that, but the challenge seems poorly constructed to me.

Hide-and-Seek – It may be a fun game in town, but this tour is not that good. It’s not easy to find the four hidden villagers with pitfalls everywhere. Besides, I never liked Hide-and-Seek anyway.

Balloon Hunting – I never really liked balloon hunting to begin with, as this remains to be one of my bottom priorities. Making it an Island Tour kinda pushed it down sever spots.

Most of all, the majority of the Island Tours are fish hunting, bug hunting, or seafood hunting. I haven’t tried all of the Island Tours, but there are already some that I like and that I don’t like.

Holidays

After playing Wild World for a while, the holidays are something I don’t care much about, but in New Leaf, they are much better. Obviously, La-Di Day and Yay Day are the worst to ever come out of the AC series, but this section is for New Leaf. Most of them simply involve picking up gifts from Isabelle and enjoying the stands, but I’m going to rank which holidays don’t count as that.

Best:

Halloween – at it’s my favorite holiday in real life when it comes to decorating, it’s no different in ACNL either. The fun part is that you can give regular villagers candy while Jack gets the lollipops. You can scare other villagers for lollipops too. Unfortunately, you can only get four lollipops a day, but you can time travel to pick up more.

Thanksgiving – also known as Harvest Festival in ACNL, I like how we have to hunt for the right fish to gather the ingredients that you can’t get outside the Harvest Festival. The winning prizes are pretty limited, but it’s still better than how to play in the GameCube Version.

Fireworks Festival – occurring at four or five times a year, the Fireworks Festival made it to the top three. The reason being is that Redd has amazing prizes you can win such as the Ultra Machine or the Ten Billion Barrel. You can also decorate the fireworks.

Worst:

Easter – or Bunny Day in ACNL. Seriously, Easter is much better in real life than in Animal Crossing, even the egg-hunting part. What I hated about Bunny Day is that the grand prize tickets are too common (more common than the winning tickets). The grand prize is not so grand at all. It’s Zipper’s Pic, which is the most worthless prize you can get that day. The Egg Basket is the real grand prize. What’s even worse is that Zipper’s Pic sells for only 10 Bells. The others sell for thousands.

Festivale – as the Pave Series ranks towards the bottom of my furniture preferences, the holiday you can obtain these items from is also not that good. To be fair, I never tried it, but the idea behind it isn’t good either.

Christmas – also known as Toy Day, I find no fun delivering the presents to the animals on this day. There isn’t much more to say, but this is another holiday that’s better off as a real holiday than in ACNL.

And that concludes the opinionated lists for ACNL. Next week, I should go over my QR codes.

Last week, I went over the furniture series, themes, and sets, and ranked them from worst to best. Now I am going over the third list, the list of all minor PWPs and Nookling expansions. Today’s entry will be about PWPs, PWP sets, and my opinions on them.

PWP Sets

A PWP set is a set of minor PWPs with the same motif. Unlike furniture and clothes, PWPs do not have a designated group. This is non-canon information here, but it’s an easy way to organize. Here are the following PWP Sets:

Generic – themeless PWPs that can be used anytime

Zen – Japanese based PWPs. All PWPs of this kind are suggested by Cranky Villagers

Fairy-Tale – Fantasy based PWPs. All PWPs (other than the bridge and the bell) are suggested by Normal Villagers

Modern – City based PWPs. All PWPs (other than the bridge) are suggested by Snooty Villagers

Ancient – Historical PWPs suggested by Smug Villagers

Garden – Natural themed PWPs

Illuminated – Metal frame PWPs that light up at night

Semi-Major – Three PWPs that you can have only one of each.

Environmental – Environment themed PWPs

City – The other city based PWPs, the ones outside the Modern motif.

I will list the PWPs based on set:

Generic:

Yellow Bench

Blue Bench

Wooden Bench

Metal Bench

Chair Sculpture

Pile of Pipes

Tire Toy

Street Lamp

Round Streetlight

Streetlight

Park Clock

Cobblestone Bridge

Suspension Bridge

Brick Bridge

Balloon Arch

Do-Not-Enter Sign

Caution Sign

Yield Sign

Camping Cot

Hammock

Fence

Fire Hydrant

Fountain

Water Well

Custom-Design Sign

Face Cut-Out Standee

Archway Sculpture

Drinking Fountain

Fire Pit

Jungle Gym

Instrument Shelter

Sandbox

Stone Tablet

Zen:

Zen Bench

Zen Streetlight

Zen Clock

Wooden Bridge

Zen Bell

Zen Garden

Rack of Rice

Fairy-Tale:

Fairy-Tale Bench

Fairy-Tale Streetlight

Fairy-Tale Clock

Fairy-Tale Bridge

Bell

Modern:

Modern Bench

Modern Streetlight

Modern Clock

Modern Bridge

Ancient:

Moai Statue

Pyramid

Sphinx

Statue Fountain

Stonehenge

Totem Pole

Garden:

Flower Arch

Flower Bed

Flower Clock

Circle Topiary

Square Topiary

Tulip Topiary

Hot Spring

Log Bench

Picnic Blanket

Wisteria Trellis

Water Pump

Scarecrow

Outdoor Chair

Geyser

Torch

Illuminated:

Illuminated Arch

Illuminated Clock

Illuminated Heart

Illuminated Tree

Semi-Major:

Lighthouse

Tower

Windmill

Environmental:

Garbage Can

Drilling Rig

Solar Panel

Wind Turbine

City:

Bus Stop

Cube Sculpture

Parabolic Antenna

Stadium Light

Traffic Signal

Video Screen

Ranking the PWPs by set

Because some are tied and others are not, I will be splitting four set into four other sets as I merge the City with the remainder of Generic.

Benches:

#1 – Wooden Bench

#2 – Modern Bench

#3 – Metal Bench

#4 – Yellow Bench

#5 – Zen Bench

#6 – Blue Bench

#7 – Fairy-Tale Bench

Streetlights:

#1 – Street Lamp

#2 – Round Streetlight

#3 – Modern Streetlight

#4 – Zen Streetlight

#5 – Fairy-Tale Streetlight

#6 – Streetlight

Clocks:

#1 – Modern Clock

#2 – Zen Clock

#3 – Fairy-Tale Clock

#4 – Park Clock

Bridges:

#1 – Modern Bridge

#2 – Wooden Bridge

#3 – Cobblestone Bridge

#4 – Brick Bridge

#5 – Fairy-Tale Bridge

#6 – Suspension Bridge

Ancient:

#1 – Pyramid

#2 – Sphinx

#3 – Stonehenge

#4 – Moai Statue

#5 – Totem Pole

#6 – Statue Fountain

Garden:

#1 – Flower Clock

#2 – Flower Arch

#3 – Picnic Blanket

#4 – Log Bench

#5 – Outdoor Chair

#6 – Wisteria Trellis

#7 – Water Pump

#8 – Torch

#9 – Circle Topiary

#10 – Square Topiary

#11 – Tulip Topiary

#12 – Geyser

#13 – Scarecrow

#14 – Hot Spring

#15 – Flower Bed

Illuminated:

#1 – Illuminated Arch

#2 – Illuminated Clock

#3 – Illuminated Tree

#4 – Illuminated Heart

Semi-Major:

#1 – Lighthouse

#2 – Tower

#3 – Windmill

Environmental:

#1 – Wind Turbine

#2 – Solar Panel

#3 – Garbage Can

#4 – Drilling Rig

Miscellaneous:

#1 – Fountain

#2 – Video Screen

#3 – Traffic Signal

#4 – Stadium Light

#5 – Parabolic Antenna

#6 – Jungle Gym

#7 – Cube Sculpture

#8 – Camping Cot

#9 – Custom-Design Sign

#10 – Balloon Arch Fence

#11 – Face Cut-Out Standee

#12 – Drinking Fountain

#13 – Bus Stop

#14 – Fire Hydrant

#15 – Instrument Shelter

#16 – Archway Sculpture

#17 – Sandbox

#18 – Fire Pit

#19 – Stone Tablet

#20 – Hammock

#21 – Water Well

#22 – Chair Sculpture

#23 – Pile of Pipes

#24 – Tire Toy

#25 – Fence

#26 – Yield Sign

#27 – Do-Not-Enter Sign

#28 – Caution Sign

Best and Worst Nookling Expansions

If I had to choose what matters more between longer hours or more items sold, a larger variety of items (and GracieGrace) would make a store better, but I prefer to have longer hours than more variety. Most people prefer a larger variety, and thanks to time traveling, stores with longer hours, as well as the Early Bird and Night Owl ordinances are obsolete. Even if that’s the case, I prefer more hours than larger variety. This is a list of all the Nookling Expansions based on the best and worst:

#1 – T&T Mart: Very early in town history, you have a convenience store called T&T Mart. Let me tell ya. This (along with Nook ‘N’ Go) is the best store expansion in AC. The longer hours and the possibility of being open around 3:00 AM on Night Owl (I like the 3:00 AM hourly music) makes this one the best. It’s also cozy, well-designed, and has nice music. Not to mention, but the exterior looks well-designed. The light-up sign post next to the shop with six glass panels and the two strips of light on top makes this store hard to beat in competition.

#2 – T&T Emporium: My second favorite expansion of the Nooklings would be the department store. Thanks to GracieGrace, T&T Emporium is one of my favorite Nookling Stores. One thing I don’t like is their short hours. Even if it’s more organized, the amount of hours open is among the shortest of the expansions. On Beautiful Town or Wealthy Town (or no ordinance at all), the store is open for only twelve hours. I also hate how this is mainstream along the AC Community. Being mainstream is one thing, but the hair-bow wig, which looks stupid in my opinion, is also mainstream. Most female players prefer that over the hairstyles you can get from Harriet. Do I want to see that as mainstream?

#3 – T.I.Y: Based on the opening times and amount of items sold, T.I.Y. is balanced between T&T Mart and T&T Emporium. It sells more than T&T Mart and is open longer than T&T Emporium. I like their red and green color scheme and the Wal-Mart like design on the outside. Also, I can keep this store forever by not doing Gracie’s Fashion Checks at all. I like the idea of fashion checks because you can decide if you want GracieGrace or longer opening hours.

#4 – Nookling Junction: The first store is also one of the worst. Aside to their lack of ambience in design, they don’t have as much services. There are no carpets or wallpaper, no catalog, and no medicine. Not only that, but you can’t have a Club LOL with this store in town, but good thing that this store is easy to remodel. Just pour in 12,000 Bells in shopping and this store will expand.

#5 – Super T&T: Despite its nice design, Super T&T is the worst T&T Expansion in ACNL. Even in the GameCube Version and Wild World, I didn’t like Nookway (which Super T&T is based on). While it’s hard to let go of the convenience store, Super T&T is even worse by having the shortest hours (if no ordinance is turned on) of all the Nookling Stores. I find that rather strange when comparing it to the department store. In City Folk, Nookway is open longer than Nookington’s. Now it’s the other way around.

Next week will be on my last opinionated lists for ACNL. Stay tuned next Thursday to see my views on the Island Tours and holidays.

Last week, I went over what animals I liked best and what I liked worse. Today, it’s going to be about items, what I like best, and what I like the least. These rankings do not include DLC, donatable artifacts, stationary, music, or tools. They also don’t include clothes and loose furniture. I may claim to be an Animal Crossing expert, but I don’t care too much about clothing collection. I just like what I put on my characters and that’s it. Interior Designing is what I am skilled in as part of ACNL. So I’m only going to do furniture series, themes, and sets.

Happy Home Preferences

I will begin my lists with the HHA Themes and Fashion Styles. Again, since I don’t have much knowledge, I don’t care too much about the fashion styles in AC. As for the HHA themes, I see some major flaws. The HHA themes are just junk thrown in, mixing in incomplete furniture themes. I also don’t like how most items have more than one HHA theme as part of it. I think next game, the HHA themes needed to be fixed. Here are the solutions to the HHA theme problem I have for the next game (and I may put that in my Idea Book later):

Eliminate fashion styles in every item except for clothes and remove all clothes from the HHA themes.

All furniture pieces should be part of only one HHA theme (or no HHA theme at all).

Antique theme must include only the ancient or historical items (minus the Japanese items).

Fairy-Tale theme must include only the fantasy items (like the Princess Series or Ice Series). Holiday items (like the Snowman Series) should not be in this theme.

Harmonious theme must be related to East Asian items (like the Exotic Series and Spa Theme) only.

Quirky theme must be renamed to Modern, as items have to relate to modern/contemporary life in the city.

Rustic theme must be related to the countryside, the US Southwest, and the house plants, but not all three at once.

Sci-Fi theme must be related to machines, the digital themes, and the futuristic themes. What does the Hospital Set or Classroom Set have to do with science fiction?

Toy Shop theme must be holiday items or items related to toys (like the Card Theme).

Trendy theme must be renamed to Luxurious and relate to anything luxurious.

If the HHA themes can be cleaned up more, I would have a better ranking of these lists.

Furniture Series, Themes, and Sets

Because I have a lot of knowledge over the furniture in ACNL, I’ll be naming all of the furniture series, themes, and sets, while I give descriptions for the furniture series, but not the themes or sets. While I go from best to worst, I’m gonna start out with the worst, then go to the best.

#37 – Lovely Series: There are a lot of pretty good furniture series, but there are bad ones as well. And the big loser of the entire Furniture Series list is the Lovely Series. Even as a child, this was my least favorite theme. It’s pink, too girly, and hearts aren’t that manly. I am not overly fond of what’s girly either. There are some girly things I like, but most of them, I will say no. This is also my mayor’s least favorite furniture series. Even if her favorite color is pink as this furniture series matches her personality (since she loves boys), this collection does not fit her interests at all. This furniture series is even unpopular according to the AC communities, and I’m not alone. But on the flipside, I do not support having this furniture series being removed from the next game. Not only there are some who would still like it (as this was also one of the traditional furniture series), but I hate seeing items being dropped from the next game. I remembered when the Jingle Series and two other furniture series were removed due to political correctness. Since I don’t like seeing them getting removed in Wild World, I don’t want any furniture series or theme removed in any game, even crappy ones like the Lovely Series and Nursery Theme.

#36 – Kiddie Series: Of all the themes I hate, the girly themes are not alone. Babyish themes like the Kiddie Series will have to go next. Even if the items are colorful, building blocks are for kids under the age of 6. This furniture series would be perfect if you want a house to fit the baby-ish theme or if you want to complete the Toy Shop HHA theme, but I’m not for either one. Do you want to buy me a toy? If yes, the ones I recommend the least are girl toys, baby toys, and inappropriate toys. I’m more of a Lego person or for the Sci-Fi and Medieval themes, but I’m 22, so I don’t need anymore toys. Party items (like the plasma ball and lava lamp) really fit my interest.

#35 – Polka-Dot Series: The Polka-Dot Series is one of my least favorite themes in Animal Crossing, and is my least favorite introduced to ACNL. Most of the GameCube Version introduced items are in the top half of my list as the New Leaf introduced items are leaning towards the bottom. The pieces on this theme are fine, but it’s the pattern I do not like. Stripes, curves, zig-zag, squiggly, polka-dots, checkers, grid (which includes plaid), and plain are the only patterns I know, and of those patterns I named, the polka-dots are the worst. After all, it’s the polka-dots I don’t like, not the theme. But the polka-dots are bad enough to sink this theme very low, but not at the rock bottom. There is a layer of dirt over the rock bottom, and then a layer of sand. If this was under the sea, this theme would be right on top of the sand, and will not float above it.

#34 – Sloppy Series: Now we are onto the special furniture series on this list. The Sloppy Series would have to be my least favorite “special” furniture series, which includes anything unorderable or anything sold at only one specific time of the year. I do not like this furniture series because the premise of it is to look messy. As a neat freak, I do not like having a messy room. Not only that it’s one of the worst furniture series in my opinion, but it’s also the hardest to get in ACNL. I do have the entire series cataloged since I have all 1,214 furniture pieces, 123 wallpapers, and 117 carpets in the catalog. If you were competing for a high HHA score, the good news is that this is the only time you can be messy while not receiving any penalty from the HHA.

#33 – Pave Series: This holiday series is very simple looking. When I first got ACCF and read the guidebook, this furniture series did not appeal to me at all since it looked simple rather than fancy. I do like some simple themes, but when we’re getting more, this one lacks creativity. Having a yellow furniture series and red furniture series would even be better than having this, but that’s already because there’s a green and a blue furniture series.

#32 – Minimalist Series: The hardships of this furniture series do not have enough potent to put this in the bottom five. Oh wait, it does, but there are five others that were bad enough to go there, so this series will never be in the bottom five. But it is already in the bottom ten, and the highest it can go is #7 worst (which is the same as #31 best on this list). Like my complaint about the Pave Series, the Minimalist Series is too simple, and the items look too small too. The color is even too bright for my eyes. I may prefer light alignment over dark alignment in the elements, but the darker colors look better so I can throw in brighter colors to add the “lights” in the picture. Even making this series a darker color won’t save it from being out of the bottom ten.

#31 – Gracie Series: This has to be my least favorite GracieGrace series in Animal Crossing. The GracieGrace themes overall are pretty trashy, even if they look luxurious. There are only two themes I like, and they are at the other extreme (the good side). The Gracie Series is not only the most expensive, but also the worst looking. They are simple with a few items. Why put a simple series as part of a luxury item family and overprice it? I can respect your opinion if you like this series, but I do not like this series.

#30 – Modern Wood Series: I like the Modern Series, but not the Modern Wood Series. It looks like the tints and shades were crammed all over the pieces. My favorite pattern has to be plain, and this isn’t plain enough. There’s not much else I can say, but there’s no room in my town for this theme.

#29 – Mermaid Series: After re-introducing the island in ACNL, they moved the Cabana Series to being one of the island themes as they introduced another series, the Mermaid Series. Let me tell you something. This series isn’t part of my world. It’s pretty girly, and part of the Fairy-Tale HHA theme (which has my least favorite motif of all the HHA themes). I do like the themes from under the sea and above, but this furniture series will never fit my interests. As a result, I rank this furniture series fathoms below.

#28 – Princess Series: This is another girly theme from ACNL, and it’s a GracieGrace series too. It’s kinda interesting that two of the GracieGrace series makes it in the bottom ten. It may not be as expensive as the Gorgeous Series, but it isn’t as good looking as the Sweets Series. If Kaylee were a princess, she would be a future city princess. This series looks more 1800’s than medieval too (that’s probably because five of the Disney Princess movies, including Frozen, took place in the 1700’s to 1800’s). Also, if I were for the medieval theme, it would be more Christian and less fantasy. This series is more fantasy.

#27 – Balloon Series: Out of the bottom ten at last, but this furniture series doesn’t float to the top. We’re still in the bottom half of this list. I love balloons. I have streetpassed all 24 balloons into a model home of another 3DS so I can have unlimited orderable balloons. I don’t even care if they’re heart shaped or bunny shaped, but I like round better. However, the Balloon Series is dead close to the bottom ten. Having a furniture series made of balloons would not stick together. In real life, they would dissolve and float away, and if you kept them in a room overnight, they will fall. This is how balloons live. One day, they would float. Then they will fall. After that, they will continue getting smaller until all the air is gone. It turns out that in ACNL, balloons reproduce like bacteria. When you shoot down a balloon, you get a balloon product, even if it’s a hat. I can totally bet that they really are plastic pieces made to look like balloons since balloons don’t really light up.

#26 – Alpine Series: I may like the Medieval theme, but post-Renaissance European themes (like this Swiss or Austrian furniture theme) don’t interest me at all. Its sister themes, the Cabin Series and Ranch Series, are the best pioneer themes in ACNL. The Cabin Series is an even better winter themed furniture series than the Alpine Series.

#25 – Exotic Series: Looks like we are back to the GameCube Version themes. In addition, we’re finally at the furniture series that my like factor exceeds the hate factor, but the like factor is still weak. The name doesn’t fit the description. The Japanese themes may be nice, but this furniture series is still in the bottom half. Too bad, so sad, but there are a lot more that I like than this.

#24 – Snowman Series: As I continue going higher up on my list, we’re now beginning to see more Sci-Fi themes and winter themes. The Snowman Series is at the bottom of my list of best to worst winter themes in ACNL (unless if you count the Pave Series, but I throw that in the spring themes). The truth here is that I don’t like embedding character designs into furniture (you should look at the Marshal dream town in ACNL. He’s everywhere, including the bedspreads). The other furniture series that makes this mistake is the Spooky Series, but the only difference is that I like the Halloween Theme. The Snowman Series just doesn’t make it high enough. The worst part about this series is how to obtain them. The Snowboys act like spoiled brats. If you’re even 99% perfect, you still get nothing from these snobby snowpeople. Even the other ACNL players are frustrated by these guys.

#23 – Card Series: Here we are, the median rank of the GracieGrace themes. The Card Series may be pretty funny looking (and the cheapest of the Gracie items), but it still looks messy. The only furniture piece that seems rather realistic is the Card Tower. Are they really made of plastic or wood, or did Gracie stack cards and compiled them together to make a card-based furniture theme?

#22 – Rococo Series: There are 22 furniture series sold at Timmy’s and Tommy’s store, but there are only 18 regular ones. There are four special ones, including the spotlight exclusive Victorian style furniture series, the Rococo Series. It looks luxurious or formal, but I have seen better. Above all, this did not make it to the top half.

#21 – Regal Series: I may consider this furniture series to be a bit girly and fantasy themed, but the Regal Series is a traditional series (aka GameCube version introduced series). The thing here is that the Regal Series is a very nice furniture series. It looks like a life of luxury. Unfortunately, this furniture series is in the bottom half, but it barely made it there.

#20 – Sleek Series: If you like cool stuff or disco/retro themes, the Sleek Series might be a perfect fit for you. It seems to be cool, and better than the Minimalist Series, but not suitable for my likings, not enough at least. This theme may be the most boyish furniture series, but it’s too boyish for Kaylee. Even so, my female characters aren’t that girly at all, but that’s possibly because I’m a boy and I don’t like what’s girly.

#19 – Egg Series: We’re at the midpoint of this list, so it’s neither in the top half nor bottom half. The Easter Series, or Egg Series, would have to be the most fun to collect, but it doesn’t looks fun to own. I don’t really like Easter in ACNL anymore than I do in real life, but I do think this furniture series has its good points and bad points.

#18 – Cabana Series: We’re now at the top half, but we’re not at the top ten yet. The Cabana Series may be one of the lesser furniture series from the GameCube Version, but combining it with a whole bunch of other series, the Cabana Series appears to make it in the top half. It’s a disappointment that it’s now an unorderable furniture series, but hey, I like the idea that they have island furniture themes.

#17 – Golden Series: This may be introduced in City Folk, but it’s a regular theme and not a DLC theme in New Leaf. First of all, there are a few hardships. One of them is that the clock is too huge for a clock. Rather than being a table clock or a tall clock (or a wall clock), it’s a huge clock. Another is that there are three pieces that are lighting pieces. Some furniture series have two, and the others that have a lighting source has one. But why do we need three in one series? I’m okay if a lamp, clock, or radio is missing from a series, and I’m more than okay if a TV is missing (I like using the themeless TVs), but I don’t like three. The third hardship is that Cyrus gives us random items rather than having us choose what items we want. I kinda hate it that some themes throw out random items rather than let you pick what you want. But this furniture series is nice looking, and so golden. I don’t care if it’s monochromatic. It’s full of gold.

#16 – Classic Series: Even if this furniture series is low in my top half, the Classic Series is one of the best ones. There are several that look fancy, and this one is a prime example. It’s also a formal furniture series. You can make a nice 1800’s house or a hotel by using this furniture series.

#15 – Stripe Series: This is one of the better furniture series introduced in ACNL. It may sound weird to put it up this high, but I like the stripe pattern and the trapezoid shaped furniture. It even looks like summer to me. The Polka-dot Series looks ugly to me, but not the Stripe Series.

#14 – Modern Series: This is another good furniture series for a hotel-themed house, and it’s actually the most suitable one. I do like the basic themes just as much as the fancy themes at times. What’s even better about this series is that you can re-color this to five other colors, not just the black tone.

#13 – Blue Series: The color blue makes me feel calm like I’m in the sea. It doesn’t sound creative or original to have a furniture series based after only one color, but this is a traditional furniture series. The design of the furniture, the diamond patterns, the study motif being a good match for this, and the color blue makes this furniture series one of the best. My only criticism is that there are three furniture pieces that store items when there are only supposed to be two. Not just that, but there’s another dresser. Even if they are lamps, they are mini-lights on dressers. So there must be a lot of items to put away here.

#12 – Green Series: When I first played Animal Crossing, the Green Series was my favorite furniture series. Green was my favorite color at the time, and it still is one of the best. As of Wild World, this furniture series makes it in the top five, but on this list, it’s not even in the top ten. Sometimes, I can stay clean and go green in ACNL. If you want to stay basic rather than be all fancy or seasonal, the Green Series is one of the best ones. This is a traditional furniture series that made it through all four games as well.

#11 – Ice Series: This furniture series seems to be beautiful. Not to mention, but it’s actually the easiest snowperson set to complete in-game, if you can go snowflake hunting all day. If you want a Frozen themed house (like in Disney’s Frozen), this would be a key factor. It’s Elsa’s ice castle. Too bad that you can’t save snowflakes, but you can sell them for a low price, or you can trade them in for these furniture pieces like you can trade blue coins in Super Mario Sunshine for a Shine Sprite.

#10 – Spooky Series: This is it! We’re now at the top ten! Most of these furniture series are futuristic or North American, possibly best fitting the United States (or Canada in case of the Jingle Series and Mush Series). There are only two of these I don’t use in StarFall, but I have used them in Westport and Belcroft. At the surface of the cloud is this haunted collection. My complaint is that they’re using orange wood and making characters into pieces rather than using basic items with jack-o-lanterns decorating the pieces. But it doesn’t need to be improved. Also, as a decorator, when I get to a holiday-themed room like this, I put in other complements related to the holiday. In the Spooky room of Jenny’s house, I used the five jack-o-lanterns you can get if you don’t give your villagers candy. That might teach you to start decorating that way.

#9 – Ranch Series: There appears to be a drought in regular furniture series in the top ten, especially for the GameCube Version introduced series. The country one is a perfect fit for any season or a western or southern themed town. I used this furniture series in Jenny’s house too.

#8 – Harvest Series: This sure has gobbled its way up to the top ten. Thanksgivings may not be as overhyped in the US as Halloween and Christmas, but its major enough to have a furniture theme too. Not just a furniture theme, but a furniture theme to stay in my top ten. I am surprised that the holiday this theme is associated with is in all versions, not just the NA version. Even if the NA region is the only one that celebrates Thanksgivings, it’s on the fourth Thursday of November, even if you pick this game up in Canada. So it’s in all versions, but on that day, only the United States celebrates it. Canada does it on the second Sunday of October.

#7 – Sweets Series: The good news for the fall-themed furniture series is that all of them are in my top ten, including this one. It is a GracieGrace theme, but one of the best ones too. It’s sweet to have such furniture series like this. I can bet that this furniture series is all wood or fabric, but designed to look like real desserts made into furniture pieces (like the Sweets Minilamp).

#6 – Mush Series: I do not like mushrooms at all, but the Mush Series is a beautiful one. The fall themed items will always prevail when it comes to the four seasons. The forest looks and colorful lighting makes me want to see more like this. I even liked how to get it in Wild World, even if it’s easier to get in New Leaf. I can tell that they didn’t get rid of the Mush Stand properly. It’s no longer in ACNL, but the Mush Wall lamp has the orange light while the Mush Hanger is kinda similar.

#5 – Jingle Series: The top five series on my list includes a GameCube Version introduced series, a Wild World introduced series, a City Folk introduced series, and a New Leaf introduced series. Halloween may be my favorite holiday to decorate for, but the Christmas themed items in AC are the best holiday themed items to get. As a great interior decorator, I put Christmas complements like both Christmas trees and the other Christmas items like the Festive Wreath and Holiday Candle. I can even show you a picture of what I did there (oh wait, I already did, back when I shared the best and worst of ACNL).

#4 – Cabin Series: As of today, the Cabin Series is my favorite GameCube Version introduced series. It doesn’t fit too many themes, but it’s a winter-themed furniture series like the Jingle Series, Snowman Series, and Ice Series. However, I would associate that more with the Southwest, the other pioneer places, or Mexico. The reason being is that the design of the fabrics on some of the items look Mexican to me, or another country from Latin America. As I said before, both Jenny and Penny are Mexicans. Penny is more proud of her nation of birth than Jenny, so I used this furniture series in Penny’s house.

#3 – Astro Series: While most of the New Leaf introduced themes are at the bottom half, they hardly make it to the top ten. There is at least one that could make it this high, and that is the Astro Series. It’s a nice furniture series for a hotel themed house. Another thing, this seems to be futuristic, but more like a space city empire.

#2 – Robo Series: After its introduction in Wild World, not much could top this robot based furniture series. Yes, it may reflect characters like the Snowman Series and Spooky Series, but I think this is better as a series and not a set. This is Kaylee’s favorite furniture series, and I used it in her bedroom. This would have to be my favorite furniture series that you can re-order from the catalog.

#1 – Gorgeous Series: Of all the furniture series in Animal Crossing, the absolute winner for the best spot is the Gorgeous Series. Back when I first seen it for City Folk, this was the furniture series I wanted most. Now, I can get it easily. What’s even cooler is that it matches the winter and not the other seasons. While the Princess Series and Rococo Series look luxurious, the 1920’s New York theme (or the Gorgeous Series) is excess in luxury. I even had a house in Belcroft that used only the Gorgeous Series in every room. The title perfectly matches the description. It’s even a popular furniture theme.

Now that is over, I will share how I rank the furniture themes and furniture sets. First is worst, and last is best.

Furniture Themes:

#12 – Nursery Theme

#11 – Mario Theme

#10 – Pirate Theme

#9 – Boxing Theme

#8 – Spa Theme

#7 – Creepy Theme

#6 – Space Theme

#5 – Western Theme

#4 – Construction Theme

#3 – Backyard Theme

#2 – Mad Scientist’s Theme

#1 – Sci-Fi Theme

Furniture Sets:

#32 – Totem Pole Set

#31 – Dharma Set

#30 – Bear Set

#29 – Panda Set

#28 – Lucky Cat Set

#27 – Nintendo Set

#26 – Frog Set

#25 – Flower Set

#24 – Chess Set

#23 – Classroom Set

#22 – Vase Set

#21 – Pine Set

#20 – Watermelon Set

#19 – Pear Set

#18 – Drum Set

#17 – Hospital Set

#16 – Insect Set

#15 – Strings Set

#14 – Guitar Set

#13 – Fish Set

#12 – Zen Garden Set

#11 – Zen Set

#10 – Study Set

#9 – Office Set

#8 – Citrus Set

#7 – Juicy-Apple Set

#6 – Pine Bonsai Set

#5 – Bonsai Set

#4 – Cactus Set

#3 – House Plant Set

#2 – Museum Set

#1 – Cafe Set

That’s all for this week. Next week, I will explore the Public Works Projects and other landmarks.

I am back to more opinionated lists for ACNL. First week, I went over the goods and bads of the 3DS game in the franchise. Then I went over to review the entire series. Today, I’m going to cover the first of the four lists I would rank (villagers, items, PWPs and landmarks, and island tours/badges/holidays). This week, it’s going to be on what this game is about the most – animals. One interesting fact is that the most common animal type (species) in ACNL is cats. There are 22 cat villagers, along with Rover, Blanca, and Katie. However, there are more dogs with green tags than any other animal with green tags. another interesting fact is that deer are the most popular villagers by the community than any other species. On Bell Tree Forums, there is a list of tiers based on popularity. Tier Five is where the most unpopular villagers are, and not a single deer is in there. There are a lot in Tier One, the most popular villagers.

In my opinion, I don’t give a damn about the Villager Tier system. It’s just damn ridiculous. I rank by personality. I don’t care if one villager is more popular than another. I only care about what I think. But some people in the AC communities take the tier system too seriously. I’m okay with rankings of Disney’s animated features and Pixar movies, but not the tier system. It also kinda ruined part of the game. I don’t really have interest into Marshal anymore ever since I saw pictures of a town all centered on him while I feel bad for Barold since he got all the hate.

Anyway, I will start out with the categories:

Best Species and Personalities

There are 34 different species and 8 different personalities. In reality, this list is not the same as it is in ACNL. A good example is that the character design for cats do not look as good as what they look like in reality, but it’s the other way around when describing the dogs. Some shows and games depict characters in a better way than others. But now I am ready to share the list:

#1 – Penguins: I am a person that likes birds over mammals in general. There are only six species of bird villagers in ACNL, and penguins are at the top, even if they can’t fly. Yeah, there are some penguins I don’t like as much, but based on the selection of villagers, the penguins would have to be my favorite of the species in ACNL. Not to mention, there are no missing animals based on personality in this species.

#2 – Eagles: Only five villagers of this personality saved this species from ranking so low, but they are no match for the penguins in ACNL. In real life, I like eagles, and I am in the right hemisphere to see them more (Western Hemisphere).

#3 – Cats: In reality, cats are really cute. They may have behavior issues, but I like cats. But in ACNL, they’re almost no different. Mitzi, Rosie, Katt, Purrl, Kiki, Lolly, Kitty, and Katie (not a villager) helped bring these species to the top of the list, but if it were for two of the birds, these meowbags would fail to hit the #1 spot.

#4 – Chickens: May sound a bit unjust, but I am basing it after one villager. But there are a few other chickens that I like. In reality, chickens are cute.

#5 – Deer: I have to agree with the popular opinion here. The deer in ACNL are cute species. However, I don’t really like them in reality due to overpopulation issues, but I do like them better in ACNL.

#6 – Squirrels: Although my favorite villager has to be a squirrel, some are in a nutshell due to some bad looks or overratedness (I’m not sure if that’s a real word).

#7 – Dogs: My favorite animal in ACNL is a dog, but my favorite villager isn’t. Dogs look better in ACNL than in real life (no offense). They may be high on my list, but they aren’t the top dogs of the game, as some bark up the wrong tree.

#8 – Hamsters: Another of these new species that weren’t in the past three games that I like are hamsters. The hamster on the front cover is named after a character from one of William Shakespeare’s plays, which if funny because of the first three letters of both the species and villager.

#9 – Rabbits: In real life, I don’t really like them because of how overpopulated they are. Their looks are worse in AC than in reality. But the rabbits are better than most species. My absolute least favorite of the rabbits would probably not be a rabbit, but more of a rabbit costume, Zipper T Bunny.

#10 – Wolves: At one time, they were all cranky or snooty. Even if they had a bad selection based on personality, I don’t hate them as much as I do in reality. But wolves aren’t that dangerous.

#11 – Birds: As a person who likes birds, you wouldn’t be surprised to see these pretty high.

#12 – Frogs: I like the one you can catch more than the villagers, but frogs aren’t all that bad either.

#13 – Elephants: I liked the elephants in the game, but they seem to be very undersized, but that’s okay. It’s just a game anyway.

#14 – Ostriches: I may like bird villagers, but there aren’t enough ostriches for me to rank this species highly.

#15 – Bearcubs: I find it rather weird that there are both bears and bearcubs when they are both technically the same species. But there is one that I do like a lot, and she helped keep this species away from the bottom 20.

#16 – Goats: Not a huge fan of them, but okay.

#17 – Lions: Since they all have manes, I wouldn’t be surprised that this is the only species in ACNL (excluding non-villagers) to have only one gender. They should introduce lionesses next game. But based on the selection, the lions aren’t all that bad.

#18 – Pigs: Some of the pigs do look ugly, but others do not.

#19 – Ducks: Of the six bird species, the ducks are my least favorite. The males are fine, but the females (excluding Molly) ruined this. I like real ducks, but not pixel people ones.

#20 – Monkeys: I don’t hate them too much, but there’s one monkey I do like. It would be the train station guy, Porter, but he’s not a villager. They’re not as favorable either.

#21 – Sheep: I’m not really a fan of the sheep villagers they have in game, but again, some I’m okay with as others I’m not. If you’re gonna ask me about Pietro, I actually think he’s cute rather than scary.

#22 – Octopi: There’s too few of them, so it’s hard for me to judge. That, and why would they make a sea creature a land animal? That’s creepy.

#23 – Cows and Bulls: I like the bulls more than the cows, but even if that’s true, they’re both lower on the list.

#24 – Koalas: I’m not too bright on them, but they’re not as bad.

#25 – Anteaters: There are one or two that I liked, but that’s pretty much it.

#26 – Bears: In real life, we may think bears as scary ferocious creatures, but the monstrous looks in reality look no worse than the villagers in ACNL of this species. Some look so ugly.

#27 – Rhinos: Like I said most of the time, some animals are much better looking in reality than others. This is true for the rhinos as well.

#28 – Hippos: At least they’re better in game than in real life since real hippos are one of the most dangerous animals. I like rhinos over hippos more in general. I won’t be hippocritical either.

#30 – Crocodiles: I don’t know why I ranked them low. I just don’t care too much about animal villagers.

#31 – Kangaroos: They are ranked very low for a good reason. The only good kangaroo villagers are the male ones, which I only see two, and they are both cranky villagers.

#32 – Tigers: I do like tigers in real life, even if they are extremely dangerous animals, but the character design of tigers in ACNL makes these species less enjoyable.

#33 – Gorillas: In my opinion, Boone is the only one of this species that I liked. I just absolutely cannot handle Violet.

#34 – Mice: In AC, they look stupider than they do in real life. Thankfully, none of these villagers make it to the bottom of my list based on personality. I don’t like their ears sticking out like how they did in AC.

Now if we’re ranking based on personality, this is how it would go:

#1 – Normal: My favorite personality in AC would have to be the normals. They are nice and sweet, very caring, and more worthy talking to. I don’t care what gender they are, but all animals of this personality are female. Yes, there some that I don’t like, but my top five favorite villagers in-game are all normal villagers.

#2 – Jock: They may be the most immature of the male villagers, but I like the jocks. They are pretty cool.

#3 – Uchi: They may have a lot of ugly villagers, but there are three that helped keep this higher.

#4 – Lazy: They are the male version of the Normal villagers, but only about food.

#5 – Cranky: They may be cool, but they are so mean.

#6 – Smug: They may be the most well-mannered ones, but I’m not to fond of them either.

#7 – Snooty: They’re snobs. Not all girls are nice you know. Some I just hate.

#8 – Peppy: Villagers of this kind are damn annoying. There are some that I like, but the personality I do not like. Have you even noticed that they are meaner than the snooty villagers?

Best Villagers

I may not care about animals as much as most people do, as I am more in favor over the human villagers (as well as I don’t have any dreamies), but I do have villagers I like more and that I like less. Since I never had all of the villagers or paid attention to some, I will mention favorite villagers by personality. I will name five of each on the good list, and only one of each on the bad list.

Lazies:

#1 – Cube

#2 – Walker

#3 – Alfonso

#4 – Lucky

#5 – Prince

Smugs:

#1 – Marshal

#2 – Rodney

#3 – Zell

#4 – Jacques

#5 – Pietro

Jocks:

#1 – Roald

#2 – Pierce

#3 – Hamlet

#4 – Antonio

#5 – Bam

Crankies:

#1 – Lobo

#2 – Static

#3 – Apollo

#4 – Hopper

#5 – Camofrog

Normals:

#1 – Caroline

#2 – Mitzi

#3 – Aurora

#4 – Goldie

#5 – Ava

Uchis:

#1 – Katt

#2 – Mira

#3 – Cherry

#4 – Pashmina

#5 – Phoebe

Peppies:

#1 – Agent S

#2 – Rosie

#3 – Bunnie

#4 – Bluebear

#5 – Peanut

Snooties:

#1 – Amelia

#2 – Blaire

#3 – Purrl

#4 – Kitty

#5 – Freya

Worst (no particular order here):

Joey

Olaf

Stinky

Ricky

Jambette

Hazel

Victoria

Miranda

Best non-villagers

Although Caroline is the grand winner of the possible villagers in-game, there are several other characters, including human characters I make, that I like more. Based on previous posts, you can easily tell who my favorite character is. Next to her and two similar characters are the few animals with green name tags rather than blue or pink. Here are my five favorites and five least favorites:

Best:

#1 – Isabelle: Obviously my favorite animal from the entire Animal Crossing series. What a perfect match for a secretary of the mayor.

#2 – Blathers: As a person who likes birds, Blathers is definitely not excluded here.

#3 – Leif: It seems rather weird, but I like him too.

#4 – Reese: I’m a bigger fan of her than the sea basses are.

#5 – Celeste: Blather’s sister, and worker of the Museum.

Worst:

#1 – Gracie: She may have good furniture, but she was awful in the GameCube Version

#2 – Saharah: Please do not give me the common wall or common floor.

#3 – Resetti: Easily the most aggressive one. I don’t have him in my town since he is pretty strict. I like Bell Tree’s concept of his role.

#4 – Tortimer: Not as good of a mayor like we would be. And he can be tricky sometimes.

#5 – Wendell: I don’t know why I put him here. He’s just not one of my favorites.

That’s it for this week. Next week, it will be on furniture collections and other item related stuff.

Before I start, what do you like most about Animal Crossing? What do you care about the least? Some people care more about their animals, obtaining dreamies, and chatting with them. They would reset their towns or go on cycling quests if their favorite animal moved in the wrong spot or moved out of town. Some people care more about decorating their town over anything. Those are interested into PWP unlocking, path designing, and plot resetting. Here is a list of priorities in the game. The ones in bold are headers/categories rather than the items.

Daily Activities

Money Making

Hunting Balloons

Fishing

Bug Hunting

Deep Sea Diving

Stalk Market

Digging

Island Tours

Events

K.K. Slider Concerts

Fishing Tourney

Bug-Off

Mardi Gras (Festivale)

Easter (Bunny Day)

Fireworks Festivals

Halloween

Thanksgivings (Harvest Festival)

Christmas (Toy Day)

Other holidays

Special Visitors

Redd

Saharah

Katrina

Gracie

Katie

Animals

Obtaining Dreamies

Villager Chat

Villager Chores

Letter Writing

Completion

Badges

Museum Donations

T&T Expansions

Unlocking other stores

Town Decoration

Plot Resetting

PWP Unlocking

Hybridization

Farming

PWP Building

Paths

Weeding

House/Character/Items

Paying off debts

Cataloging

Ordering

Interior Design

Exterior Design

Character Design

Pattern Design

Wi-Fi

DLC

Streetpass

Dream Suite

Hosting Visitors

Visiting other Towns

So there are eight categories of priorities, and not including the categories, 50 different priorities. As a result, I will have two lists. One is on which categories I feel are more important, and the other is on the priorities rather than the categories.

Ranking the Categories

Some priorities in ranking may overlap, as there are some more important than others, but for an average weight on the categories, here are what I find more important or less important:

#1 – Completion: Of all of the priorities in video gaming in general, completion is the number one thing I care about the most. For example, when there are trophies to earn in a PS3 game, I aim for all of the trophies. When there is a percentage completion, I focus on getting a 100%. When there are several developer levels to beat, I go for all levels. And ACNL is not different to others. Paying off debts, building all the major PWPs, achieving the 30 PWP quota, and filling up the museum are what I like most.

#2 – Town Decoration: Until ACNL came out, this wouldn’t rank really high, but now I’m in favor of this since the introduction of the mayoral features and the Dream Suite. Getting the projects I want matter a lot to me. Achieving perfect town status also feels important to me. While interior design may be fun, town design may sound better.

#3 – House/Character/Items: One of the things I liked most about Animal Crossing in general is decorating your house. With more items introduced and more features added, this feature got better and better. Even character design has improved unlike in the past three games.

#4 – Daily Activities: When there is nothing left to be done after decoration, customization, and completion, what matters the most to me would be stuff like money making and stuff you can do with tools. The truth here is that I don’t care too much about the rest of the stuff after this.

#5 – Special Visitors: When there are stuff that needs to be done as it requires the special visitors, I would need them to their help. But once I am through, repeats would become a much smaller priority.

#6 – Wi-Fi: Even if I can only go so far without online trading and stuff, I don’t care too much about most Wi-Fi features. I like to share my town, but I only use this feature when something is needed to be done.

#7 – Animals: While the most important feature of the game is to learn about friendships and interact with animals, this is one of the smaller priorities of mine. I do have favorite villagers, but I do not have dreamies.

#8 – Events: Although this is one of Wild World’s biggest flaws, I care very little about the holidays and events in New Leaf. I’m more of a completionist, and when I have all the items I need, there’s no reason to celebrate the holidays anymore. But I do like this feature, I just don’t use it.

Judging by how I rank the categories, I’m more of a decorator and completionist rather than someone who would live the life of Animal Crossing. And that is true, but this is how I want to play. That’s why I have more ideas on town management and items rather than on animals.

Ranking the Priorities

50 is a lot to list and rank, but if I had a specific order, this is how it would go:

#1 – Money making: What’s more important than anything else in games with a money making simulator would have to be making money. Without money, there’s no way to build PWPs, remodel homes, get the furniture for your houses, or almost anything else. How are you going to catch fish? You’ll need a rod, which costs 500 Bells. You can make more money by hitting money rocks or digging for gyroids, but that also requires 500 Bells for a permanent use. Wanna go Beetle Farming or get a diving suit? You’re gonna need to spend 1,000 Bells to go to the Island, which can’t be unlocked until your down payment is complete, which is 10,000 more Bells. If you’re playing a Tycoon game like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon, what do you think is more important than making money? Nothing. Sims games are the same thing. Besides, money in-game adds a restriction to your play. Do you want to have no limits while playing? Not only that, but there wouldn’t be any fun if you had unlimited cash or have no money as an object.

#2 – Unlocking other stores: While I feel that it’s necessary to remodel the Nooklings stores, other stores need to be unlocked first. You’ll need a garden shop to start landscaping, a shoe store to unlock the hair salon, and the hair salon to decorate your characters’ looks. I don’t like the default hairstyle for the AAA eyes (unless if they did make the default hairstyle the ponytail hair, but that’s not the case).

#3 – T&T Expansions: The more you remodel Timmy and Tommy’s store, the more features you can unlock. Although I don’t need T&T Emporium in StarFall, T.I.Y. is the minimum store where you can buy shrubs without going to the island an K.K. Music without time traveling every Saturday, as well as Leif selling house plants. Super T&T is needed if you want to buy wall furniture. T&T Mart is the minimum store for almost anything else, including carpets, wallpaper, medicine, and even catalog. You can’t even unlock Club LOL if you only had Nookling Junction.

#4 – Paying off Debts: One of the biggest priorities I had in Animal Crossing history is maxing out my house in expansions. And in New Leaf, there’s even more Bells to pay to max out house size. If I pay off all of my debts, that would mean more room to store more furniture. But even with the houses being bigger than before, I feel that we need more room, like both the first floor and second floor have four rooms while every room should be 12×12 spaces.

#5 – Museum Donations: The reason why I value donating to the museum is because of one major thing: Museum completion symbolizes how far you have completed your town in the older games, especially Wild World when you had only one house. Besides, the animals may want to live in a better town. Well, a town would be better with a more complete museum too.

#6 – Cataloging: It’s more than just to obtain the Catalog Gold Badge. If I had a more complete catalog, I would have more to order from so I don’t have to go time traveling back and forth to look for an item I don’t have on my catalog. I have all furniture, carpets, and wallpaper on my catalog, most clothes, and some of the rest. For unorderable items like the Ski items and the Mush Series, I can get them easily without ordering, or I can get them from another person online.

#7 – PWP Unlocking: PWP Building would be the next one on my list, but in order to build the Public Works Projects that I need that aren’t available on the list, unlocking them is the first step. I don’t care too much about the animals and diving, but I would need them in order to unlock the PWPs I need.

#8 – PWP Building: Now we are at the PWP building part. While most of the first seven were about blowing out the requirements, this would be my second biggest priority in game irrelevant to filling out the prerequisites and biggest priority pertaining to decoration, customization, and life inside ACNL. Stuff I like are the fountain, street lamp, park clock, wooden bench, the lighthouse, the illuminated projects, the Cafe, and the projects under the Modern motif. Stuff that’s missing in ACNL are the Mayor’s statue, the Carousel, and a few other futuristic projects (I’ll go over that in a few weeks from now). Not only I need to choose what PWPs I want, but I also need to choose where I want them, pay them off, and celebrate the ceremonies. I even written a guide on GameFAQs on PWPs in general.

#9 – Interior Design: My favorite part about Animal Crossing (like I repeatedly said) was interior designing. This is actually one thing I care about the most as I play. Setting out the furniture, moving the furniture, special features like lights, fans, and beds, and changing the carpet and wallpaper. Interior Design is not only something I excel in ACNL, but in real life too. I know all about the types of lighting, doors, windows, window treatments, walls, and floors. I know about furniture production, kitchen types, and furniture styles too. I’m an expert in both ACNL and reality on interior design.

#10 – Ordering: What got me interested into playing Animal Crossing from the start is the whole ordering feature, where you can order items, get them as presents in the mail, and place them in your house or other things. But now, I felt that this feature made all orderable items unlimited in stock. I can even order the items I could hardly find in the Nooklings Stores.

#11 – Exterior Design: In regards to housing in ACNL, updating exteriors would be my least favorite part, but just because something is the worst of one thing doesn’t mean it’s bad at all. You could have a list of colors you like, and the worst color on that list is still a color you like. This is how I am with exterior design. Even if it doesn’t soar above the other house features in ACNL, this one is pretty unique and something I wished was in the previous games.

#12 – Plot Resetting: Before I had StarFall, I never done this before. Due to this bad animal moving mechanic, this is necessary, especially if you are a serious town designer like me. You can control where your animals live. Because I’ve been doing this, no animal has ever moved south of the river in StarFall, ever. There wasn’t even one to begin with.

#13 – Fishing: Of all the money making methods, selling ACNL items to other players would be the best way. But if we take out online play, I would prefer fishing over anything else. Coelacanths, stringfish, dorados, and sharks are the biggest money makers, and even if you can’t find them, you can still get whale sharks, saw sharks, oarfish, hammerheads, tuna, arowanas, arapaimas, napoleonfish, blue marlins, and gars. In the GameCube Version, the only three fish we primarily caught were the sea bass, red snapper, and barred knifejaw. The red snappers and barred knifejaws were what we wanted at the time, and they still do a good job in ACNL, but not that much. But this priority is where we meet the biggest villain in AC, the sea bass.

#14 – Bug Hunting: Right after fishing would be bug hunting. Since you don’t have to worry about random bobs, mysterious shadows, and sea basses when you search for bugs, this is a bit easier. But I prefer fishing over bug hunting, especially when bees (which actually look like wasps) are in the question. Tarantulas and Scorpions are the biggest nightmares, but you don’t have to worry about the three bad bugs if you’re only beetle farming on the island.

#15 – Digging: When there are cracks in my town, I know what this means. It’s time to start digging up buried items to keep the town clean from buried junk. Not only that, but I can make a profit by selling what I find. The cracks are mostly gyroids, but I do miss when animals buried items all around. This also helps me find hidden ore and work on the fossil collection. On a related note, I shake trees sometimes, but not all the time.

#16 – Farming: Also known as landscaping, this was only good when I work on town design and not money making. Fruits are a good money maker, but I rather use them, as well as saplings and bush starts, to landscape my town. I even try to stay organized when I plant the trees.

#17 – Paths: Since path patterns are needed to make a really good dream town like StarFall, I seem to like paths. One week, I will share my path patterns on Town of StarFall. I made some really cool paths, including the ones that go through the arches.

#18 – Hybridization: Another element of a good dream town is growing flowers. As part of town decoration, I prefer to grow my hybrid flowers. My favorite flowers are the tulips, and making hybrid tulips would make my town more beautiful. Next game should have hybrid flowers as a donatable artifact to the museum.

#19 – Badges: I am a bit iffy on this feature, but leaning more to the positive side. While it covers some priorities I care more about, it also goes over what I care less for. As a result, I wouldn’t work on getting the badges I can’t get on my own.

#20 – Character Design: Although character customization is a cool feature, there are only very few outfits that look good on my female characters. I prefer keeping the eyes and hairstyle the same all along and rarely update the outfits.

#21 – Weeding: Due to the Beautiful Town Ordinance, I don’t have very many weeds anymore, but I don’t like seeing them in my town either. If they grow, I will pull. It’s still one of the stronger priorities.

#22 – Pattern Design: While I’m not a good pattern designer, I seem to care about this more than almost half the priorities I listed. I only do this to get the correct patterns like the flag design, path design, and coat design. I sometimes do this for fun, but not too much.

#23 – Stalk Market: This may be the biggest way to make money, but it’s more of a gamble. I only cared for it just to get the badge and not for the Bells.

#24 – Hosting Visitors: While online plays such as visiting and hosting are fun since I get to interact with the humans, I prefer hosting visitors from another town. In this case, I can avoid picking up voided villagers as I can show others what my town looks like.

#25 – Visiting other Towns: Almost tied to hosting visitors, I seem to do this too. Either way, I only do this when I need to buy, sell, trade, or giveaway ACNL items to/from another player. Other than that, I don’t really use this feature that much. I like playing alone.

#26 – Deep Sea Diving: Even if it’s not as fun as fishing and bug-hunting, it’s still high in the priorities list. It only leans to the middle since there aren’t very many good catches to find as when I’m through with museum donations, I don’t do this that much.

#27 – Redd: As I’m starting to deviate away from the town decoration, customization, and completion priorities, we’re beginning to see what I care less for. Redd would have to be the top priority of all special visitors since he sells what I can donate, but when I have all of the works of art, Redd isn’t that important anymore. In fact, I got all works of real art prior to my town of StarFall creation, so I don’t have to time travel back and forth on StarFall like I did on my first two towns. Therefore, I do not visit Redd at all.

#28 – Katrina: As much as I hate the luck system in ACNL, Katrina seems to be more of a cheat guide on what to wear to unlock the luck or avoid the bad luck. Since I like to complete Main Street, buying fortunes from her is very important. Now I don’t care as much once she’s gone, but this is still big.

#29 – Gracie: Although I don’t need T&T Emporium in StarFall, she seems to be a bit important if I want to get the last Nookling expansion. Since this is a big deal in many towns, but not in StarFall, she’s not ranked very high, but I do recommend completing her fashion checks if you want to get a golden shovel, Gracie furniture, or some other items exclusive to the last expansion.

#30 – Fishing Tourney: Now we are moving onto the holidays. Even the best one on the list isn’t in the top half of the priority list. I may like competition and some of the rare fish items Chip gives out, but this isn’t too important to me. It’s not even my favorite AC holiday.

#31 – Bug-Off: I would tie this to the Fishing Tourney, but the reason why it’s ranked lower is because of the point system rather than size competition. Moreover, I don’t like catching bugs as much as I like catching fish.

#32 – K.K. Slider concerts: I’ve never been passive before about K.K. Slider music. I would like to listen to all of his music to get more, but I lost interest into time traveling week to week just for more music. Besides, the Nooklings now sell his music, making this even less important. Another thing, I don’t even like K.K. music anymore. Low quality music it is to my opinion.

#33 – Other holidays: When I mean other holidays, I mean Weeding Day and any holiday Isabelle is involved. They may not have special features like Halloween or Harvest Festival, but it’s nice to stop in and pick up a gift once in a while. Of these holidays, April Fools is what I care for the least. I don’t need all of these animal pics. I also don’t care too much about birthdays.

#34 – Villager Chat: As animals aren’t really important to me, this one ranks higher than the other priorities I haven’t covered yet. I do prefer chatting with them more than aim for dreamies and letter writing. It’s still one of the few things I care less about in-game. I used to care a lot about this back with the GameCube version, but not in New Leaf.

#35 – Saharah: Of all of the special visitors, Saharah is the most frustrating one. There are some carpets and wallpaper you can’t get from anyone but Saharah, but she sometimes places in carpets and wallpaper that are sold at T&T’s stores. The worst ones are the common wall and common floor. I don’t think she should be giving out non-exclusives at all.

#36 – Halloween: It may be my favorite holiday in ACNL, but when I have collected the Creepy items and prank items, there’s no need to celebrate this anymore in-game.

#37 – Harvest Festival: Another holiday that was fun to celebrate in-game, but I don’t see anything important about it anymore since I have the fruit basket and cornucopia in Jenny’s house (in StarFall). It’s still fun to get the ingredients and make the food.

#38 – Bunny Day: Although I don’t like Easter as much as I like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween, the way how you play it in-game seems to be fun.

#39 – Fireworks Festivals: Even if the items achieved from the Fireworks Festivals are pretty cool, I don’t need to collect them, making this not very important to me. I don’t know what to say, but it’s just that I’m not a fan of the holidays in AC like I am in real life.

#40 – Obtaining Dreamies: Like I said numerous times, I don’t care too much about the animals. Even if I have favorite villagers and least favorite villagers, what matters more are on villager placement, PWPs, and other stuff. But I’m not that crazy over obtaining dreamies. So far, Caroline never moved into StarFall, but I do like her.

#41 – Toy Day: I actually never played in this holiday before in ACNL (as well as my lack of interest over ACCF), but it doesn’t interest me at all. I even got my wreath from other people online and not from Jingle.

#42 – Villager Chores: This may sound lazy, but I don’t really have much time to fulfill villager requests. I don’t need to say it again, but you know the story.

#43 – Dream Suite: Although I like to share my town to the public, visiting others dream towns isn’t really a hobby of mine in ACNL. I know some who enjoy this a lot, but I’m not a heavy dreamer.

#44 – Festivale: Of all of the holidays in ACNL, this would have to be the one I care about least, other than the birthdays and April Fools. Not only I don’t really like the items, but I don’t seem to like feathers either. However, this does sound like a unique holiday since this is similar to Wisp’s quests in the first game, but I’m not to big into holidays either.

#45 – Island Tours: I did say that I like this feature, but I don’t see very many importance in this, based on my collection. I would like to do this, but due to work and school, I put this lower on my list.

#46 – Hunting Balloons: I love balloons, but not too much about hunting them down. Since they don’t spawn until every 10 minutes, this isn’t something I would enjoy. The slingshot is the tool I use the least of the six.

#47 – DLC: Even if I like some of the items, I don’t care too much about Nintendo Zone or promotional items. I only keep my 3DS system at home and not take it all over the place.

#48 – Letter Writing: This is an even smaller priority of mine in ACNL. In fact, I never cared too much about writing letters. If I did, I would aim it towards the less repetitive villagers (aka Jenny and Penny, my human villagers). But I don’t even care about mailing those blonde girls either. It’s not one of my favorite features.

#49 – Katie: The special visitor I care about the least is Katie. I don’t care too much about traveling to other towns, and she requires traveling. I like the other visitors anyway.

#50 – Streetpass: And here we are, the least important feature in my opinion. The only time I used streetpass for StarFall is to get all 24 balloons to become orderable. Since you can order them from model homes, as you can’t order them from your catalog, I had to do this. But since I don’t bring my 3DS all around, Streetpass is one of the many features I cared about the least.

That’s enough for today, but if you had to rank those priorities, how would they go?

We all know that I am a male, but my character is not. Another thing, it’s true that I didn’t base my characters after real people like I said last Tuesday. However, Kaylee is somehow a female version of me. While we have similarities, we have differences. Also, Kaylee is actually a symbol, a symbol of what my dream girlfriend is. Of course, I would always want to date a girl that is sweet, critical of left-wing ideologies, and is in the business field in college. This is who Kaylee is. You can see their biographies in Week two’s Tuesday entries.

Although I created Kaylee nearly over a year before I made StarFall, I didn’t start making her official backstory until I made StarFall, when I had Jenny and Penny. Her original backstory doesn’t match her official backstory. First of all, Kaylee mostly worn pants in my first two towns. According to her official backstory, she would never wear pants. She’s in favor of wearing dresses and skirts more, with no exceptions. Also, while she would never wear a dress without tights, she would never wear a skirt with tights or leggings. 80% of the time, Kaylee would wear a skirt, along with a long-sleeved shirt. She likes to show her legs below the knees, but she doesn’t like showing her arms. Another thing, the Kaylee in my first two towns isn’t very sweet at all, and a bit more serious. In the actual story, Kaylee is very sweet, and is only serious on serious issues. She’s silly the rest of the time (like she acts like she was abused when she gets rickrolled or she will hit with her ponytail if someone calls her fat). Although the Kaylee in my second town has the same birthday as she really does, the first one has a birthday of July 20th. Her actual birthday is October 1st. Her character design (ponytail hair, dark brown hair, brown eyes with AAA shape, white skin) is the same all along, which explains why she had that.

In regards to her fashion preferences, the reason why I made her a girl who likes wearing knee-length skirts and long sleeve shirts is a bit more complicated. As she is a symbol of my dream girlfriend, I would prefer dating girls that like wearing skirts rather than pants. I also think girls that wear skirts look better with long-sleeve shirts. The ponytail, I like girls with ponytails, especially long and fat ones.

Now that I’m done sharing about how Kaylee symbolizes what kind of girl I like to date, I will now go over how Kaylee is similar and different to me.

Differences between Kaylee and I

Of course, the two obvious differences between Kaylee and I are the gender differences and the reality differences. I am a real boy. She’s just a fictional girl. It means we’ll never get married, but I hope to meet a girl like her in real life. There are five other differences both of us have:

Personality – Kaylee’s ultimate personality is that she’s sweet. In StarFall, the sweeter a girl is, the sillier she is. And all three of my human villagers are at that level. For me, I can be sweet and silly, but the whole time, my personality is mixed. I can be bitter sometimes. Kaylee is more tolerant of getting a backlash, even if she doesn’t want one. For me, I am highly sensitive to getting a backlash or being pointed in a negative light. Sometimes, I do act up, but most of the times people point me in a negative light, it has to be over contrasting opinions. And I hate being given a negative reputation. Kaylee is a positive thinker, with a few times she is negative, but only on her blog. I’m mostly negative, which makes me an unhappy person. Even I wish I can get out of this negative phase. With my personality flaws (anxiety, aggression, and negativity), I will never be as sweet as Kaylee.

Disability – an interesting fact about me is that I am autistic or have Asperger’s. I also have a serious hearing impairment when I was little. In fact, I had four surgeries on my left ear, and I still get doctor’s visits. Kaylee is very normal. She is not physically or mentally handicapped or disabled. She did have some problems with her body. She had ovarian cancer and uterine cancer as a teenager, which resulted in surgeries that removed part of her reproductive system. She will never get cancer again, but this ruined her life since she wanted children. Her power to seek the truth inside someone was a gift from God as a form of sympathy, but that power uses her fat as fuel, making her suffer fat deficiency (a mild version though). This is why she eats unhealthy foods all the time, to help her recover from it, and to use as a fuel for her power. So she had problems with her body too, but she isn’t autistic. Nor does she have any sort of mental disorder (unless if you count silliness as one).

Wealth – I mentioned earlier that she is very rich. At birth, both of her parents were rich. Her father (and mother) were both non-corrupt lawyers that written bestselling books. The total family wealth is $0.2 billion (or $200 million). Unlike her, my family was poor before 2009, including me. Even if we’re no longer poor, our family wealth would never be as high as Kaylee alone. Also, I always lived in an apartment until 2010 when I have an actual house. Kaylee lived in an actual house as a child, but lived in an apartment after graduation. However, she did live in a luxury apartment. I was in those cheap ones.

Maturity – Even if I’m 22, I’m still immature. I’m poor in hygiene, lack time management, and sometimes, have a bad grade in responsibility. Not only that, I’m usually lazy. But I am good at video gaming. I even have helpful advice to someone who’s never played the video game in question before. Kaylee is the opposite of that. She does very well with time management. She is a very clean girl. She’s good with responsibility, and she can cook and clean well, even if she doesn’t do any of that with Jenny and Penny around. She can finish five hard essays in one day, but it takes me a few days to complete one. As for her skill in video gaming, she is a terrible person. It takes her one year to beat an easy video game, and if she is just as lazy as me, six months is her expected time.

Weight – Kaylee is a skinny girl. She has healthy eating habits, even if she eats unhealthy foods a lot. She is more conscious of her nutrients she takes in. She exercises a lot too. Her weight is 130 pounds, and it’s hard for her to go over 135 pounds. For me, I am fat, very fat. I weigh over 200 pounds, and at the end of 2013, over 300 pounds. I even had a surgery on my stomach very early in 2014. Even if I lost a lot of weight, I still can’t go under 200 easily.

I also forgot to mention that she is Roman Catholic. I am either an unspecified Christian or a Protestant. I don’t go to church that much while Kaylee goes to church every Sunday (except when she was living in StarFall). She’s different to other girls too, but that’s another story.

Similarities between Kaylee and I

Even if a sweet, skinny, and rich girl in ACNL is being played by a mixed-personality, fat, and formerly poor boy, Kaylee is somehow a female version of me. There are similarities between both of us. For example, I have brown hair, just like her. We also have a good sense of morals and know what’s right and what’s wrong. Here are five other similarities between the both of us:

Politics – both the mayor of StarFall and I are identified under the Republican Party, even if she has no interest into law and politics. Even as a millennial, she has strong conservative views. Both of us are pro-life, anti-gun control, in favor for right-to-work laws, anti-communist (including Obamacare), and don’t throw in race in every issue. We also don’t like to be bullied into supporting the opposing opinions. We believe that everyone should be responsible. Some of Kaylee’s physical and social attributes indicate that she is conservative, even if I don’t mention her political viewpoints. We both agree on some liberal viewpoints too. We oppose smoking in restaurants, pro-recycling, oppose coal and oil while supporting solar and wind energy, believe that evolution should be taught in schools, and support increased job capacity. Kaylee doesn’t talk about politics a lot, but she is very conservative.

Place of birth – both of us are born in California. Our cities of birth are part of the Inland Empire, which is the desert region in Southern California. We like the Californian fast food chains, Disneyland, and the Pacific Time, but doesn’t like problems with society.

Career interests – Kaylee’s dream job is to run a hotel resort. Unlike her, I want to run a restaurant. Either way, we both have to aim for a major in business and hospitality. We need to learn about finances, economics, business management, advertising, and corporations.

Opposite gender interests – as I said before, Kaylee loves boys. If there’s anything she likes more, it would have to be boys. But she can be crazy sometimes. While most girls in relationship with a boy still prefer being with girls than boys, Kaylee rather hang out with the boys. Even if she doesn’t have too many female friends, her best friends are female. I based Kaylee’s love interest into men and boys after my interest into women and girls. In high school, I used to sit with the girls all the time, sometimes with those of the same grade, and other times with those at one level above me. All of my human characters in StarFall are female. My favorite villager (and favorite non-villager) in ACNL, also female.

Other interests – Kaylee and I have some of the same non-political opinions too. Even if she isn’t too video game or TV show savvy, she likes other things too. My favorite themes are the Sci-fi theme and Medieval theme. Kaylee’s two favorite themes are exactly the same. Her favorite season is fall, she likes cold air over hot air, and likes wind. Like her, I like all that too. Her favorite holiday to decorate for is Halloween. Same is true with me.

Some of my other interests aren’t what inspired Kaylee’s backstory, but they have inspired the other two as well.

StarFall – etymology

If you want to know where I came up with the town name, it is already a popular town name, but the difference is that the “F” is capitalized. The first word, star, refers to science fiction. Popular titles with that word include Star Wars, Star Trek, and a few other things like that. The stars refer to the big balls of gas that burn and illuminate the sky, which is in space, a popular destination for sci-fi books and movies. Kaylee is a sci-fi person. The Space Castle, the illuminated projects, and the modern motif on the North Side of the river best match the sci-fi theme. The second word, refers to the season of fall. All three of the girls have birthdays in October, November, and the first week of December, which is all in the fall season. Their astrological signs are the fall signs. Jenny’s house best fits the fall theme, while Penny’s house, even if it’s winter-themed, fits what month my dream town is set in – December. The month of December is a winter month, but the majority of the month is in the fall.

Now that I’m done going over what Kaylee and I have in common, I should return to my AC-related opinions on the Thursday blogs.

I did go over the best and worst of Animal Crossing: New Leaf last week. I went over ten details over each, talk about how this game has improved and what new problems were made. Yes, community-related problems have always been a problem since the dawn of social networking. But the other problems created, they were pretty drastic.

This week, I’m going to go over the entire Animal Crossing series released in the United States. Yes, even if I played some more than the others, I have played all four games. 2003 was the first year of my Animal Crossing life, and I have played it every year since, with 2011 and 2012 being the only years I didn’t. 2014 was my biggest year for AC when I joined the Bell Tree Forums, created the town of StarFall, and written two FAQs for GameFAQs.

So it’s time I start ranking the games. You may heard the common sayings “first is worst” and “last is best”. I’m going to do the opposite this time.

#1 – Animal Crossing: New Leaf

There is no surprise that ACNL would be at the top of the list. Not only it’s my most played game of the series, but it’s also the game I spent the most time on in 2014. Obviously, this is the best AC game of the series. With the cool new features added and character design improvements, nothing could top ACNL. Normally, I play the male characters since I’m a guy, but due to the improvements in character design, making the females look prettier, I only have female characters in my town. This game is more than just my favorite game in this series. Other people like this game over the other AC games too. I guess more customization options and a larger variety in items is keeping this game from being outranked by the others.

What New Leaf did right:

I may have went over this last week, but I’ll do a recall. The mayoral options (which are PWPs and ordinances) are what top the list of best features in the game. I also liked some of the new items introduced. Along with that, they had different types of clothes rather than just different clothes, the achievement system, dream towns, island tours, and further customization options.

Aside to the new features, they retained some of the best features like interior design as they revived some of the lost features. NES games will never come back, but I think Island Tours would be a good substitute. Features either lost from the GameCube Version or Wild World that never came back in City Folk have returned in New Leaf. The train station, camping, the island, and villager photos are what we needed.

New and returning features aren’t the only things that went right in New Leaf. They have made some improvements. One is that the bar has been lowered on bank savings to get the ABD. Money making has also been easier, time traveling doesn’t have a negative effect on the Stalk Market, Resetti isn’t as mean as he used to be while he is completely optional, and Redd’s paintings (and statues) have a flaw that can be easily exploited.

Problems in the game:

Even if New Leaf is best of the series, it is not a perfect game. Granted, some problems were problems from the very beginning, as well as the community related problems like duping and powersaving (which is hacking), but there were some created by the game itself. Things that annoy me are the difficulty of getting PWPs (more specifically to where useless questions can’t be narrowed down), the current luck system, Saharah giving you non-Saharah exclusive items, the group mechanic, and random animal move-ins from visiting others’ towns (I’m looking at your Prince). But the one problem that is the biggest liability of this game is that animals are free to move wherever they want. Even I was a victim of this. On my first town, I had a few move in front of my house and some in front of my Town Hall. On my second town, one moved in front of my bridge. In StarFall, I was able to control where they move with the reset villager trick to keep them away from the south side of the river, but one wrecked my extended campsite area after publishing dream town. This is bad, even to those who don’t care about urban planning too much. And what’s stupider than that is when the animal is the latest villager to move in, they are immune to being pushed out of town until another animal moves in. I’m not the most sensitive Animal Crosser to this issue, but I don’t like this idea either.

Along with the frustrations of the game, other problems were retained or created in ACNL. One of them is that paying off your house costs even more money than ever before. Look how greedy Tom Nook is. Your first debt is now 49,800 Bells to pay off a small house, with 10,000 as your down payment and 39,800 as the rest of the first debt. You have to carry a whole bunch of money at once to buy Gracie furniture, but we can’t hold all that money at once. Beetles are easier to scare. Grass decay still exists. The sprinkler and lawn mower are unorderable, even if they were regular items sold by the Nooklings (I don’t get why they are supposed to be unorderable). And balloons and pinwheels can only be obtained through StreetPass.

And there’s still more. Some features that were introduced in City Folk, in both Wild World and City Folk, and in all three past games were removed in New Leaf. I like the shopping point system Tom Nook had, as well as the credit cards, observatory, and increased chances of getting rare fish. But at least we had the advantages in New Leaf.

#2 – Animal Crossing: Wild World

Prior to ACNL, ACWW would have to be the best of the AC series. Even if I played ACNL more than any other game, I played ACWW for more years than ACNL. I saw more improvements from ACGC to ACWW than ACWW to ACCF. Since it had more features than the GameCube Version and less blurry graphics and complicated controls than City Folk, New Leaf is the only game better than Wild World in the series. Also like New Leaf, Wild World is on a portable system. Most video games are better for consoles than handhelds, but some franchises are better for handhelds than consoles. And Animal Crossing is one of them.

What Wild World did right:

There’s not much to say, but I would like to give a few points about the game. First off, the Robo-Series, Mush Series, and Mad Scientist’s Theme were all introduced in ACWW. Next, as someone who didn’t care about collecting clothes, Tom Nook no longer sells them. The Ables do. So we finally got more space for furniture at Tom Nook’s as the Ables at least have something to sell. Hats, accessories, and hairstyle changes, all new to ACWW. This fixed the GameCube Version’s problem of permanent hats. We have extra features at Town Hall, bigger homes to decorate, Tom Nook’s point system, and two attractions added to the Museum. One more new feature that I liked – you can move from town to town.

Not to mention, but some problems in the GameCube Version I did not mention yet were fixed. You can store more up to 90 items in your storage spaces (but they are the same to every dresser and wardrobe), the HRA doesn’t give you mail after every change in layout, Redd’s visits are predictable, you no longer have to mail fossils to get them identified, and you can stop animals from moving. Plus, when you visit another town, you can see the other human active.

Problems in the game:

Before City Folk (or especially New Leaf), comparing between the GameCube Version and Wild World was pretty fun. And Wild World had a plethora of problems, some of them were already in the GameCube Version, and others were new.

First problem. Due to the small size a cartridge can carry, towns are much smaller. Everything is at one level of elevation, which is a problem because I liked cliffs. New Leaf had a similar problem, but at least there are cliffs. Wild World, not even a single one. On a related note, they removed the dock from the big lake that we seen in the GameCube Version. Ever since this change, it was never reversed. Now moving to major problems. Redd sells counterfeit paintings, quality of music dropped, graphics are low quality, and the island is removed completely. Other problems – Tom Nook’s final expansion requires shoppers from other towns to buy from Tom Nook, all humans have to live in one house, NES Games are gone, and the turnip glitch where Nook’s turnip prices are always low.

The biggest disadvantage of Wild World is a severe one. There is no problem in ACWW worse than the lack of holidays. Because the game is trying to be politically correct, they took out many holidays, including the one-gift holidays, Halloween, Thanksgivings, Christmas, and both Sports Fair events. The holidays in ACWW are all bad. The only holiday I actually liked in ACWW was the Acorn Festival. At least the New Year’s event is a real holiday (and the only real one). The Fireworks Festival is more common, so that is good, but it’s not a real holiday. The Fishing Tourney and Bug-Off are alright. But the other holidays, don’t get me started on them. They are not only fake holidays, but they are stupid, especially Yay Day and La-Di Day. There is no point behind them. Another thing, they removed a lot of items to contribute to their political correctness. Removing the balloons was the biggest mistake in this area. The Spooky Series, Harvest Series, and Jingle Series were also removed. But even if we had this problem, this didn’t stop me from playing ACWW until ACNL game out (but remember, I had a two-year break from playing AC since I completed all my goals for the first time). Still, this is Wild World’s biggest problem.

#3 – Animal Crossing (GameCube Version)

This is the game that started it all (at least in the US). Even if it’s the most watered down version of the AC Series, it was good for its time, and today, it is still well-remembered since it’s the foundation of Animal Crossing. Just thinking about how nostalgic I am about this, the GameCube Version was pretty good. New Leaf did have more improved features of the stuff that were removed in Wild World, but the GameCube Version still stands in the center. Because of the new features introduced in future games, this remains to be a major flaw for the GameCube Version. But it isn’t perfectly bad either.

What the GameCube Version did right:

Even with future games having bigger and better stuff, there were many things the GameCube Version had that the other games didn’t. One of them was the NES Games. Having games within games was pretty fun. Back when the 3DS eShop opened for the first time, the game Excitebike was free for a little while. Excitebike was one of the NES games in the GameCube Version. They also had the 1981 version of Donkey Kong (which I played more in DK64 than anywhere else), sports games, pinball, and some others I can’t name of. We also had journals, better sound effects, balloons and pinwheels were a lot easier to get, shines in the ground, and the dock in the big lake.

Add to that, you may also have remembered that Redd never sold counterfeit paintings. That means Blathers can accept any painting. There was also a lot of grass with a few patches of dirt. Town models were major collectibles in the game (as future games had less models). And what about Wisp? He was the ghost who could pull out your weeds if you bring him his five spirits with your net. Too bad he was removed while the Rafflesia was added if you don’t pull your weeds. This made the weed problem even worse. It’s a good thing the GameCube Version didn’t have this.

Problems in the game:

Obviously, the first game will always have problems. Remember, practice makes perfect. But after adding all the new features in future games, especially New Leaf, much of the stuff is a liability in the GameCube Version, and it would be unbearable to go backwards.

First problem, you can only change your shirt. The shirt pattern applies to not just the front of your shirt, but also to your back, the sleeves, and the hat. You can’t remove hats, you can’t change hair. Character customization isn’t as fun back then. What else is there? Everyone has their own home, but they all live in the same acre, no matter what town you have. The first floor room and second floor room counts as one room as you can’t change the carpet and wallpaper in the basement. And almost all towns are nearly identical.

Customization isn’t the only problem with the GameCube Version. We had this restriction where Nookway won’t remodel unless if someone from another town buys from your town, animals can repaint your roof without your permission, lack of Wi-Fi, animals are more aggressive back then (even the Normal villagers), animals moving in or out is unpredictable, Sable will never become friends, the HRA send you a letter after every layout update, and you can only store up to three items per dresser. Not just three items, but you can’t store furniture, fish, or insects. What if New Leaf was like that? Good thing it isn’t.

#4 – Animal Crossing: City Folk

Like what the popular opinion says, Animal Crossing: City Folk is my least favorite game in the AC Series. In fact, I didn’t even last 10 days when playing ACCF if I can remember. It’s basically Wild World, but with grass decay and on the console. Even from the beginning, ACCF was a problem, and with Nintendo WFC shut down, City Folk is dead.

What City Folk did right:

Even if it’s a bad game, it’s not all bad. City Folk was the game that introduced pro-patterns, GracieGrace, and swapping tools with the control pad, something that I use a lot in New Leaf. We also got to live in our own houses again (and in different locations). You can have the beach house too. We also have balloons, Harriet having her own business, silver tools, and the return of the holidays, plus two new ones.

Two of the ACCF exclusive features that I liked. One was that you can have shopping cards, so you don’t have to hold all of the money when you go shopping in your pockets. The other, you can choose what renovation you want of Tom Nook’s store. You can have longer hours, more items, or a balance. Too bad we don’t have that in New Leaf.

Problems in the game:

Like all AC games, City Folk had some issues, and these are some serious issues here. What heard from others (as well as my personal story) are pretty grim. Grass decay is the worst part. It deteriorates very fast and recovers very slowly. I saw a picture of a desert in ACCF with a lone tree standing. It was also one town per console, animals have more repetitive dialogue with no options, lack of improvements, and blurry graphics that would make my eyes squint. The character design is my personal problem. The humans are much shorter in ACCF than they are in previous games, as the female characters can show their underwear when they lay down. I know this isn’t necessary to say, but I didn’t like that at all. Plus, Animal Crossing is a kid’s game.

Conclusion

That’s all of the games I’m going over. Next week might be about how I came up with my character in ACNL. But for now, I’m done sharing my views on AC.

Today is Thursday, which means I will write about my personal experiences with Animal Crossing, neither having to do with my current town nor about improvements or suggestions for the next game. Since this is my first week, I shall begin with my review about New Leaf, describing what I like about this game compared to the past three games and what annoys me with this game that either shares disadvantages with the past games or are unique problems.

Back when ACNL released all over North America, I would rate it a 10/10. I thought it was the perfect game and only had a few problems. But after playing for one year, my overall rating dropped to a 9/10. While the game is addicting and worth playing, the “few disadvantages of the game” were major, and they are New Leaf’s biggest liability.

The Best of New Leaf:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the best AC game so far, despite the disadvantages that weighed it down below the perfect rating. With the mayoral features and other new features added, nothing else could top New Leaf in the AC franchise. One thing I liked about ACNL is the interior design feature, where you can lay furniture around, move them, and change the carpets and wallpaper. Also, some furniture series and themes, such as the Ski Set, Gorgeous Series, and Sci-fi Theme are really good and are some items I can’t have a town without. I never liked collecting clothes to begin with, but after the improvements to character design and clothing feature, I don’t need to rely on patterns anymore. I like the clothes available in the game, but I prefer long sleeve shirts and dresses for my characters.

Anyhow, here are the ten best features about New Leaf that weren’t in previous games:

Public Works Projects – the core feature of the game is also what makes New Leaf better than any game in the series. I always wanted lamps in town, and they have what I want. I can also build lighthouses, benches, fountains, and lit-up public art like the illuminated arches I use as gates to my characters’ houses. The better of the PWPs in the game are the Museum’s second floor, the Café, and the Campsite. Even if the major PWPs are nearly inconsequential, I don’t think my town would feel complete without them.

Ordinances – along with the PWP feature is the ordinances in the game. I felt that this feature isn’t enough, but it’s worth it. I worked hard on planting my hybrids, and watering them everyday is a chore. One ordinance can make it impossible for your flowers to wilt and nearly impossible for weeds to grow. Another ordinance I like is the Night Owl Ordinance, where stores are open longer. Early Bird does the same thing too, but I’m a night person, and the music at night sound nice.

Clothes – in previous games, collecting clothes are some things I have no interest in. That was until ACNL, but I still don’t see them as valuable. However, bottom-wear, shoes, and socks can be changed, as shirts and dresses have different sleeve lengths. Although I like the idea that female characters can wear pants, the humans in StarFall look better in dresses or skirts (yes, they’re all girls, coming from a town made by a guy). The females in AC look pretty in skirts, but also with long sleeve shirts.

House Customization – up until New Leaf, interior design was the best part about Animal Crossing. But now, we have more than just decorating your houses. The extend goes to the exterior as well. Different looks outside, like better doors, cool mailboxes, well-decorated walls, and even the pavements makes the town more diverse in architecture. Not to mention, but the house orientation is like Wild World’s, except that there is a basement and there are only 8×8 rooms at the maximum expansion. But the impact of this made Wild World unplayable. If both the first floor and second floors had the same four rooms (main, left, back, and right) in the next game, then that would make New Leaf unplayable.

Museum’s Second Floor – As part of the PWP feature, I like the idea of having custom displays. Even if we need new exhibits to donate to, making our own exhibits is the first step to success. In my first and third towns, I tried making theme showcases as my second town was on holidays. And, you can get your silver shovels from Celeste.

Achievement System – Games these days are being overflown with achievements to unlock, and Animal Crossing is not exempt from it. I enjoy playing games with achievements like that. For example, in some of the PS3 exclusives, you earn trophies after passing one point or doing something. Little Big Planet has pins after completing some quest or achievement, like getting a pin for being Mm Picked when your level becomes a developer favorite. New Leaf has badges, where there are 24 fields of badges. Each time when you get a bronze badge, you unlock a new badge for the area, as the gold badge represents completion in that area. What’s even better is that the golden badges are colored, but the Gardening Specialist badge has an illusion where the badge has no color since yellow is the background.

Dream Suite – Ever since towns got even more diverse, the feature where you can visit others’ towns through dreaming was added. I can appreciate the work done by other people in other towns now. Some dream towns don’t look so good, but others like my town are fantastic.

Furniture Modification – the same store that you can sell items to now also has a section where you can modify furniture to look like something new. Some items look better as original, but others are fun to redecorate for more art. The colored chairs and lamps in the birthday room and the multi-colored sci-fi lamps in my mayor’s house makes my interior design look better.

Where do I want to live? – Back in the GameCube Version, all humans have to live in the same acre in every town. That was so limited to me. In Wild World, we can have only one house. In City Folk, all four humans have their own houses in different areas, but the game decides where they go. In New Leaf, you get to choose where you want to live, like how you choose where PWPs go.

Island Tours – To me, this is more of a combination of two lost features from the GameCube Version. One of them was the island you can only access with a GameBoy Advanced system. The other was the NES Games, which are mini-games. In New Leaf, combining both features made one super feature. You can even earn medals to buy island-exclusive items.

What New Leaf did Wrong:

Of course, no game is perfect, even Animal Crossing: New Leaf. After playing for over one year, I decided that it wasn’t as good as it was when I first got it. First of all, duping has ruined the game. Even if unorderable items have always been an issue, this is not an excuse to dupe. Not only it has a possibility of losing items or data corruption, but it’s destroying the game’s virtual economy. Also, sea basses are just as annoying as they usually are, and their huge sizes that confuse us with the coelacanth made it much worse. Inspired by the sea bass comics I saw on Tumblr, I wanted to see a comic where a sea bass tells a coelacanth that he duped crowns for all the sea basses to get to the one destination they all want to go to, the Re-Tail. The Coelacanth got mad and said “humans don’t want to accept cheaters.” Although no comic exists, I would like to see it. But there are ten things that were problematic to both Animal Crossing: New Leaf and previous games. Duping wasn’t intended to be in the game, as sea basses are always my favorite annoying characters in the game, so they didn’t make it to my list.

Here are the ten liabilities of ACNL:

Club Tortimer – This is arguably the worst part about Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It’s not that it’s so useless, but I heard many horrible stories about child trolls that grief other players (even some 9-year olds would get bullied by 13-year olds on Club Tortimer), but most of the griefers are kids, bullying players over the age of 18. Some stories include where kids would beg for the money made by other players. They call them names, hit with tools, scare fish and insects, or worse, trap them on the island using the island tours. The woman at the desk says that “the waters are choppy”, which means the victim can’t escape. The troll won’t let them leave until they give them what they want from them. I mean seriously, we worked hard on getting all the money (even if some were lazy and duped crowns for it), and they’re begging for it when they didn’t work for it at all. If you want the money or rare items, you have to do it yourself, or organize a trade through an AC forum. Other stories include gender bias, inappropriate talk, and other stuff like that. I did go to Club Tortimer once, but I never had any online conflict. But I feel bad for those who did. Next game, I think they need to remove Club Tortimer completely or make it possible where you can escape the island even when a tour is set. I heard that MiiVerse is bad too, but I don’t go there.

Who moved in front of my house? – While community related problems are always going to be problems, the worst of the game that isn’t related to community issues is the animal moving mechanic. Ever since the removal of the sign posts, animals are free to move wherever they want. This is a problem, especially to those who want really nice towns. The animal moving mechanic includes killing hybrid flowers and perfect fruit trees, disrupting paths and PWP plans, and worse, obstructing or obscuring other landmarks, especially moving in front of the mayor’s house. I had problems with this one too. I seen many complaint threads, on GameFAQs and Bell Tree, about this. In my Idea Book, I have a solution to this problem listed as one of my ideas. Some people plot reset or place PWPs to prevent animals from moving in the wrong spots. The worst case in StarFall was when Prince moved in front of my campsite, crushing trees and paths. I picked him up from another town, unexpectedly, and he plotted his house as soon as I returned to my town.

Group Mechanic – along with the animal moving mechanic that bugged me about ACNL was this algorithm that makes some items sold very frequently as others are almost never sold. It may work well in the GameCube Version and Wild World, but not when there are more items to be sold. I think this algorithm needs to be removed in the next game. I don’t care if it was to encourage trading. I wouldn’t need to join an online AC community if it wasn’t for that, but some items I was looking for were never sold. I tried time traveling back and forth on my towns before StarFall, and they never had the items I wanted. It’s become a liability.

Luck System – I hate the luck system in ACNL. I know Nintendo intends us to do one thing, but judging by the mechanic, it’s basically punishing people for not wearing what they want them to wear. On the good luck days, to unlock your fortune, you have to wear the lucky item. On the bad luck days, you will face bad luck unless if you wear your lucky item. I think it’s unfair to do that. You are promised big riches coming out of the rocks, but you won’t get it unless if you wear the right item. On your bad luck days, you would get only half as much as a money rock would emit if you don’t wear the right item, or you could trip unless if you have the lucky item. I think this is bad for the game, especially if someone is carrying a balloon. The balloons are rare streetpass items that can’t be ordered from the catalog, and they can be lost if someone trips over, carrying one. I confirm, this is punishing you for not wearing what they want you to wear. Do you hate that you trip on random days?

Farming for PWPs – what’s even more annoying than the sea bass is when you go looking for PWPs. The most effective way is to use the diving trick. Animals would randomly suggest PWPs, but the chances are higher if narrowed down. Even when I go as far as I can, they would rather ask useless questions rather than suggest the right PWP. This is getting very annoying, and I think there should be an easier way to get more PWPs in the next game.

They’ll stay if you’re nice – in New Leaf, animals are more likely to move away if you max out their friendship status, as being violent to a villager makes them want to stay longer. This can be a problem if an animal that you hate moved in or if an animal that you like is more likely to leave because you were nice to them enough. Shouldn’t it be the other way around where if you’re nicer, they’ll stay, but if you’re meaner, they’ll want to move. Yeah, I actually suggested the solution in the title of this problem, but I think if you’re equally nice to every villager, everyone has the same chance of moving, as unequal treatment leads to one more likely to leave.

Flowers – the issue here is that some scammers or vandals would want to steal or kill your hybrids you worked hard on in town. A solution here would be that you can enable or disable picking up flowers when the gates are open. In this case, vandals can’t mess with your flowers like what the problem is in New Leaf.

Grass Decay – although this hasn’t bothered me too much in ACNL, I have sympathy for those who did have issues with grass deterioration. Just alleviating it a bit like in New Leaf won’t really solve the problem. Removing it completely would be better.

Do I have to carry it all? – In City Folk, you had the shopping cards where you don’t have to carry so many Bells to buy something expensive. In New Leaf, this has been removed, making it possible to only buy one item at GracieGrace per trip. I think increasing wallet size or returning shopping cards would be the best choice.

Beetle Sensitivity – the last problem on this list is more of a minor problem, probably not even as severe as the sea bass problem, but a problem in ACNL. Ever since sneaking up on a bug came back, rare beetles like the Hercules Beelte are easily scared, as even walking by, slowly, but four blocks nearby, would scare them off. This makes beetle farming harder.

That’s all of my ups and downs on ACNL. If you want to see more entries like this, check out Town of StarFall every Thursday.